capfan33 wrote:Peregrine01 wrote:capfan33 wrote:90% of the nba/nfl is on gear, they’d be dumb not to be. Lebron doesn’t have access to anything that other players don’t, at least with steroids specifically.
NBA players with multi-million dollar salaries aren’t using the stuff that your regular gym bro is. Guys like LeBron with hundred-million dollar incomes have yet another level of access.
I’m by no means an expert but this is factually incorrect lol. Steroids are ubiquitous now (to the point where there’s an epidemic among younger people taking them) and a high quality cycle will only set you back maybe 3k a month tops, well within range for basically anyone in the NBA/NFL. Most bodybuilders are normal people and aren’t wealthy, and they can readily afford what’s necessary to compete with anyone else. Lebron does not have special access to some 100k wonder drug lol.
The bigger issue with steroids is how well someone responds to them genetically, as there can be quite a bit of variation in efficacy depending on your genes. And I would guess like most things athletically LeBron probably responds to them better than most, but that’s just another part of him being an athletic outlier.
I’m not an expert either but am not sure your first paragraph is really right. I recall reading a while back about Lance Armstrong and trying to figure out why we should care that he doped when we know that like every single cyclist in his era doped too. I figured it was basically all a level playing field if everyone was doping, and therefore we could still safely assume he was the best of his era. And the answer I saw about this when I went down that rabbit hole was basically that his team had more money and therefore was able to have a much more sophisticated (and therefore very likely more effective) doping operation. As I said, I’m no expert on this topic, but I imagine the same is probably true in other sports. That could manifest itself in (1) using more types of PEDs, (2) getting your hands on rare/cutting-edge drugs, (3) hiring people to optimize how they’re all used, including how the various PEDs are best used in concert with each other, how to optimize their use for the particular player’s body, and the exact timing of when they’re used for optimal effect, (4) hiring people to figure out how to ensure no positive tests while pushing the envelope as much as possible, etc. I imagine this sort of thing can cost a lot of money and would yield superior results to the type of 3k-a-month costs you’re referring to.
